Hampstead Arts Festival WORDS Weekend Day 2

Hampstead Arts Festival WORDS Weekend Day 2

Sunday, 13th November, 2.30pm

Clare Pollard and Patience Agbabi

Two of Britain’s leading poets remix Ovid & Chaucer for the 21st century.

Pollard's Ovid's Heroines is a series of poems in the voices of women from Greek and Roman myth, bringing to life a cast who are brave, bitchy, horrifying, heartbreaking and surprisingly modern.

Agbabi's Telling Tales celebrates Chaucer's Canterbury Tales for its performance element as well as its poetry and pilgrims. Boisterous, funky, foul-mouthed, sublimely lyrical and bursting at the seams. Expect a lively evening of entertainment.

Clare Pollard has published four collections of poetry, the most recent which, Changeling (Bloodaxe, 2011) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her play The Weather premiered at the Royal Court Theatre and her documentary for radio, ‘My Male Muse’, was a Radio 4 Pick of the year. Her latest book, a new version of Ovid’s Heroines, is currently touring as a one-woman show with Jaybird Live Literature. Incarnation, about motherhood, is due from Bloodaxe in 2017.

Patience Agbabi is a sought-after poet, performer and educator. Her fourth poetry collection, Telling Tales (Canongate, 2014), a contemporary Canterbury Tales, was shortlisted for the 2014 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry and Wales Book of the Year 2015. Her work recently appeared in The Refugee Tales (Comma Press, 2016).